The Green And The Gray

by Timothy Zahn

  Melantha lifted her face from Roger's shoulder just far enough to look warily at the stranger. "It's all right," Roger told her quickly as she clutched him a little tighter. "He's a cop, and he's on our side.

  How many Grays are there?"

  "Three," she said, still sounding nervous. "One was with me, and there were two more somewhere else."

  "All accounted for, then," Roger said, feeling a trickle of relief.

  "But this one probably had time to call it in," Fierenzo reminded him. "Come on."

  Melantha held onto Roger the whole way back through the transport, letting go only long enough to fling herself at Jonah for another quick bear hug when they reached him at the entrance. "Is Jordan okay?" she asked as they started up the stairs. "They said Halfdan would do something terrible when he found out who helped me."

  "He's fine," Jonah assured her. "He's mostly been worried about you."

  "Did they hurt you at all?" Velovsky asked, an ominous undertone to his words.

  "No, I'm all right," she said, giving him a curious look. "They said they'd only hurt me if I tried to run or use the Shriek on them. Are you Velovsky?"

  "That's right," he said. "Why?"

  She clutched Roger's arm a little tighter. "I thought you were on Aleksander's side," she murmured.

  Roger looked back at Velovsky, caught the brief quirk of his lip. "We can talk about it once you're safe," he assured the girl.

  "If there is any place that's safe," Velovsky grunted as they reached the shed and climbed up through the trap door.

  "Oh, I think we can come up with something," Fierenzo told him, opening the outer door and giving the area a quick scan. "Come on, and I'll show you."

  The Buick was pretty crowded with the five of them jammed into it. But it didn't stay crowded for long. Barely a mile after Fierenzo directed Roger onto Richmond Terrace, he ordered him to pull over again. "Here we are," he announced. "Everybody out except Roger and Velovsky."

  "You're kidding," Roger said, peering at the building straight ahead down the street and then turning to look at Fierenzo. "You are kidding, right?"

  "Not at all," Fierenzo said, nodding across the street to their left. "It's a perfectly respectable motel.

  More to the point, it's got a very nice stand of trees surrounding the play area out back."

  Beside him, Melantha suddenly stiffened. "Mom and Dad are here!" she breathed.

  "Which is even more to the point," Fierenzo agreed quietly. "Room 22, I believe. Your family's in the adjoining room, Jonah," he added, looking at the Gray. "I figured that after all you'd been through, you all deserved a little time together."

  "And if Torvald tracks them here?" Velovsky countered darkly. "We can't be more than a couple of miles from their transport."

  "Torvald's going to expect us to head back to Manhattan as fast as the laws of Richmond County allow," Fierenzo said. "Which is where you and Roger are going, by the way, in case they've got spotters on the Bayonne Bridge. I'll bring the rest of the group in tomorrow when there's more traffic to hide ourselves in."

  "Very clever," Velovsky growled, clearly still not convinced. "And if Torvald isn't cooperative enough to follow your little red herring? Are you and a few Grays going to protect Melantha singlehandedly?"

  "I don't think single-handedness is anywhere in the picture," Roger told him, pointing out the windshield at the building that had first caught his eye. "I gather you hadn't noticed where we are."

  "The old 120th Precinct," Fierenzo identified it, a sort of malicious nostalgia in his voice. "I was here for two years before they transferred me to Manhattan. Still know quite a few of the guys." He cocked an eyebrow at Velovsky. "You think even Torvald's got the gall to try for a kidnapping on a police station's doorstep?"

  "Can I go now?" Melantha asked anxiously. "Please?"

  "We can all go," Fierenzo assured her. "Roger, you've got my cell number—call immediately if you spot trouble. Otherwise, I'll let you know when and where we'll be meeting. I'm not sure exactly when, but it won't be before noon."

  Roger nodded. "I'll be ready."

  "I just hope you know what you're doing," Velovsky muttered.

  "I guess we'll find out, won't we?" Fierenzo said, popping open his door. "Now vamoose, you two.

  And don't pick up any hitchhikers."

  Velovsky didn't speak again until they were on the Bayonne Bridge, heading into New Jersey. "We going back to that hotel?" he asked.

  "Might as well," Roger said. "The room's paid for, and Fierenzo arranged for a late checkout, so we've got it until two. You have someplace else you'd rather go?"

  "Yes—my own apartment," Velovsky retorted.

  Roger shook his head. "Not a good idea. If Garth or the other Grays recognized you, your apartment's the first place Torvald will come looking."

  "I suppose," Velovsky conceded reluctantly. "I just never sleep very well anywhere except my own bed."

  "Personally, I'm not going to have any trouble sleeping," Roger said, yawning prodigiously. "It's been a really long day."

  Velovsky was silent another minute. "They're not really in Room 22, are they?"

  Roger shrugged. "I have no idea."

  "In fact, they're probably not even in that particular motel," Velovsky persisted. "Fierenzo still doesn't trust me."

  "I don't think he trusts a lot of people right now," Roger told him.

  "He seems to trust the Grays."

  "Only the ones Melantha trusts."

  "He trusts you," Velovsky said pointedly.

  "Maybe." Roger shot a glance at Velovsky. "And before you start in on the Grays, you might want to remember that it's your Green friends who are holding my wife hostage."

  "So you say," Velovsky muttered, his veiled outrage subsiding a little. "If they are, it's for a good reason."

  "Yeah," Roger said. "Sure."

  "I'm sure they'll let her go unharmed," Velovsky insisted. "They're good people, Roger. They really are."

  "Yeah," Roger said again. "I guess we'll find out, won't we?"

  Velovsky didn't reply.

  41

  The summons Caroline had been expecting came at six o'clock the next morning. She took a quick bath, got dressed in the clothes she'd been living in for the past two days, and went downstairs.

  As usual, Sylvia was waiting for her in the library. As was decidedly unusual, so was breakfast.

  "Good morning, Caroline," the older woman said gravely as Caroline walked across the room, her nose wrinkling at the delicate aromas coming from the covered tray on the desk. "I'm sorry to wake you at such an early hour. But we're going to be doing some traveling today and need to get started."

  "That's all right," Caroline assured her, stepping to the desk and gesturing to the tray. "Is that for me?"

  "Yes," Sylvia said. "I thought you should have a good breakfast before we go."

  Caroline lifted the lid. Beneath it were scrambled eggs, sausage, and a Belgian waffle covered with strawberries and whipped cream. On the desk beside the tray were a tall glass of orange juice and a small carafe of coffee with a mug beside it. "You've come a long way since I introduced you to human food," she commented.

  She looked Sylvia straight in the eye. "But then, this whole thing has been an act from the very beginning, hasn't it?"

  She would have expected Sylvia to indulge in at least a moment of gloating. But there wasn't even a hint of a smile on the older woman's face. "I'm sorry I had to lie to you," she said gravely. "But I had no choice. You and Roger had found us, and I had to do something quickly or our secret would have been exposed."

  "Locking us away in a guarded cabin wouldn't have been enough?" Caroline countered.

  "Actually, no, it wouldn't," Sylvia said. "The news of your sudden disappearance would have been dangerous all by itself if the wrong people got hold of it. I had to come up with a way to neutralize the entire threat."

  I had to do something quickly. I had to come up with a way. Caroline stared at her...
and suddenly, one final detail about that moonlight rendezvous clicked into place.

  Because high-ranking Greens didn't go to see other people. They brought the other people to see them. Nikolos had done that, hauling her and Roger up to Columbia University from Washington Square. Aleksander had done it, too, sending Vasilis and Iolanthe to bring them to where he was waiting at their apartment. Even here, both Nikolos and Sylvia had invariably sent for her instead of coming to her room themselves.

  But it was Nikolos who had walked across the yard to Sylvia. Which meant that it was Sylvia, not Nikolos, who was the higher-ranking person. Which meant—"Nikolos isn't the Command-Tactician, is he?" she said. "You are."

  This time a smile did indeed touch Sylvia's lips. But it was a smile of admiration, not gloating. "Very good," she said. "As I said before, you're smarter than you let on."

  "I'm also very confused," Caroline said. "How in the world did you pull that off? Why did you pull it off?"

  Sylvia gestured to the tray. "Your food's getting cold," she said. "You'd better sit down and eat."

  "If I do, will you answer my question?" Caroline asked, pulling a chair over to the tray.

  Sylvia shrugged. "There's not much answer to give," she said, walking around behind the desk and sitting down. "Along with the usual death and destruction, the war in the Great Valley generated a huge degree of chaos and disorganization among our people. People and families were shuffled randomly back and forth, sometimes getting lost in the process. Lists of the Gifts were lost or garbled as Pastsingers died or found more urgent things in need of remembering. Sometimes Leaders and Visionaries were nowhere to be found and confirmations were missed completely, leaving those children to figure out their Gifts for themselves."

  "And Nikolos was twelve when you came here," Caroline said around a mouthful of waffle as that age suddenly took on a new significance. "No one really knew what his Gift was."

  "It was a bit trickier than that," Sylvia said. "We had to persuade the Visionaries in the Valley that he wasn't old enough to be tested, and that we would do so when we reached our destination. We then had to imply to those here that he had in fact been tested before we left. But as I say, all was chaos, and no one was paying as much attention as they should have."

  "And your own Gift?"

  "We couldn't hide the fact that I'd been in the fighting," Sylvia said. "But it was easy enough to conceal who I really was and pass me off as a Group Commander instead."

  "But why do any of this in the first place?" Caroline asked. "You were going to have a Command- Tactician with the group anyway. Why did it matter who exactly it was?"

  "They had their reasons," Sylvia said. "To be honest, I don't really know what all of them were."

  "Except that deception has always been a part of warfare?"

  "That's certainly part of it," Sylvia agreed.

  "Can you at least tell me whether this was your idea or Nikolos's?"

  "It was my superiors', actually, back in the Valley." Sylvia smiled at Caroline's reaction. "Yes, even Command-Tacticians have superiors, usually older and more experienced Command-Tacticians.

  Mine were unhappy with the way Leader Elymas was organizing his refugee expedition, and decided to take certain aspects of it into their own hands."

  "Which ones?"

  Sylvia shrugged. "Basically, it was a question of defense capabilities," she said. "In the mix of Gifts Elymas had chosen, they didn't think he was taking enough Warriors, especially given the unknown dangers posed by the Humans the Farseers had seen. There was an extra storage area behind the transport's engine room, so they contrived to select a number of Warriors and conceal them inside.

  That way, when the inevitable trouble erupted, I'd have a larger contingent to work with."

  "I see," Caroline said, nodding. "Only the trouble never happened."

  "Of course it happened," Sylvia said. "What do you think we're in right now?"

  "I meant it didn't happen back then," Caroline said. "So why didn't you reveal yourselves to the others after you arrived?"

  A grimace flicked briefly across Sylvia's face. "As you say, they were able to settle into the city without needing us," she said. "Elymas was already dead, and Nikolos and I didn't think his successors would appreciate our deception. Fortunately, my hidden Warriors had included both males and females, and I had learned there was a great deal of wooded territory north of the city where we could live and breed without really being noticed. So one night I brought the whole group here and began the long process of building a sanctuary and creating an army to defend it, should our people ever need us."

  She gestured toward the south. "Now, they do."

  "How many of you are there?" Caroline asked. "I was guessing around a hundred fifty."

  "Close," Sylvia said. "The enclave numbers a hundred fifty-six, a hundred twenty of them Warriors and Group Commanders. Add those to the sixty already in the city, and I should have enough of a fighting force to quickly and decisively defeat the Grays."

  Caroline shivered. Nearly two hundred Green Warriors, with the Grays prepared to face only sixty. It wouldn't be a defeat, it would be a slaughter. "I thought you could only do what your Gift allowed," she said. "How is Nikolos able to handle tactics?"

  "Obviously, he can't," Sylvia said. "I've had to coach him the entire way, from the moment we boarded the transport to our last conversation just a few hours ago. Everything you've heard him say has been basically a direct parroting of what I've told him."

  She snorted gently. "Except for that little throwaway line he dropped on Saturday about retreating to upstate New York, of course, the comment that put you and Roger on our trail. I was ready to strangle him for that one."

  "Oh, I don't know," Caroline said evenly. "It may have started off as a mistake, but you certainly did a very good job of turning it to your advantage." She lifted her eyebrows. "You did turn it to your advantage, didn't you?"

  Sylvia's lip twitched. "You're referring to your notes, I presume?"

  "Yes," Caroline said, her heartbeat picking up its pace. Here it came; the moment of truth. "You knew all along I was going to write them, didn't you?"

  "I knew you had written them once they were planted," Sylvia said. "But it wasn't until that first dinner, when you showed you were smart enough to pass up what looked like a clear opportunity to escape, that I realized you might also be smart enough and brave enough to find a way to contact the outside world."

  "So the thing with those two state troopers was a test?"

  "Actually, it was pure happenstance," Sylvia said. "Up until then my plan had simply been to allow you to waste your time and energy trying to persuade the naive Green to defy her Command- Tactician and come over onto your side. But once you'd shown yourself to be a notch above that, I decided to offer you a more proactive role."

  "As a disseminator of disinformation," Caroline said, putting some bitterness into her tone. "I feel honored. So when the Grays assemble in Upper Manhattan tonight to face you, they won't find anyone there?"

  "No, there will be a few Warriors coming onto the island there," Sylvia assured her. "Enough to keep the Grays from becoming suspicious. But that isn't where the main thrust will occur. And of course, there certainly won't be any Groundshakers accompanying them."

  "Damian will be elsewhere?"

  Sylvia shook her head. "Damian doesn't exist," she said. "He was one of the Groundshakers left behind who sent our transport on its way."

  Caroline nodded slowly. So she'd been right about that part, too. "Just one more lie?"

  "One more attempt to prepare the Grays for the wrong war," Sylvia corrected. "Ever since the beginning of this, whether we were agreeing to sacrifice Melantha or else making up a Damian who didn't exist, the goal has been to deflect their thoughts and attention away from the fact that we have far more Warriors than they realize. That's where our hope lies."

  "I see," Caroline said heavily, trying to conceal her own cautious trickle of hope. So her
second note had made it through. Sylvia had missed the significance of the clue she'd planted and had let it go. "I suppose I should be relieved that you aren't planning to level New York anymore. Or will that change if you find Melantha again?"

  "I never wanted to level New York or kill any of your people," Sylvia said, an odd intensity to her tone. "I still don't. I may not have any genuine affection for you, but I bear you no ill will, either."

  "No, all you want is the chance to finally use your Gift," Caroline said, grimacing.

  Sylvia lifted her eyebrows. "We have been using our Gifts," she said. "A Warrior's true Gift isn't fighting per se, but simply the protection of our people. True, sometimes that Gift involves combat, but more often it simply requires thoughtful preparation and watchful waiting."

  "You've certainly done plenty of that," Caroline murmured.

  Sylvia sighed. "I'm not looking forward to this war, Caroline," she said quietly. "I saw enough death back in the Great Valley to last the rest of my lifetime. But my duty is to protect my people.

  Whatever I have to do to achieve that end will be done."

  "I understand," Caroline said. "Do I at least get to go to the city with you? See for myself what exactly you have to do to my people in order to protect yours?"

  Sylvia smiled. "Come now, Caroline," she said, gently admonishing. "You can't manipulate me that easily. I thought you realized that." The smile faded. "Actually, though, I've already decided to take you with us. Whatever happens tonight, win or lose, you'll be free afterward to return to your home."

  "And Roger?"

  A shadow passed across Sylvia's face. "Roger's with the Grays," she said. "Whatever happens to him is in their hands now."

  There was a moment of silence. Then Sylvia stirred and gestured toward the tray. "You'd better hurry if you're going to finish," she said. "The Warriors are already on the move. It'll soon be time for us to go, as well."

  Light was beginning to filter through the curtains across the motel room when the ringing of Fierenzo's cell phone jolted him awake. He grabbed for the arm of the chair he'd been sleeping in, pulling himself mostly upright as he fumbled the phone out of his pocket and thumbed it on.